No Lend Lease to the Reds

If Lend Lease had not been available to the USSR, would the Nazi Summer Offensive of 1942 succeeded?

  • No --- Soviet victory at Stalingrad and Nazi retreat

    Votes: 16 55.2%
  • Yes --- Nazi capture of Stalingrad and all west of the Volga-Don Rivers, to the Persian frontier

    Votes: 13 44.8%

  • Total voters
    29
Several people have suggested that Stalin could have arranged a ceasefire with Hitler, but there was approximately zero chance for that. Hitler was not going to give up on the aim of his life - a German Lebensraum up to the Urals - when he thought he was winning. Without Lend-Lease he'll be even more convinced.

Well, the point might be that a ceasefire might be brokered when the soviets turned the tide, but couldn't necessarily exploit it enough to go on long distance offensives of their own. So by that point for Hitler he's no longer winning but still has the chance of salvaging something from his prior wins while for Stalin he'd manage to stem the tide but unable to completely drive out the nazis.
 
Well, the point might be that a ceasefire might be brokered when the soviets turned the tide, but couldn't necessarily exploit it enough to go on long distance offensives of their own. So by that point for Hitler he's no longer winning but still has the chance of salvaging something from his prior wins while for Stalin he'd manage to stem the tide but unable to completely drive out the nazis.
The problem is that it took a very long time for Hitler to realize that he wasn't winning and before that he's unlikely to agree to any conditions that are acceptable to Stalin.
 
The problem is that it took a very long time for Hitler to realize that he wasn't winning and before that he's unlikely to agree to any conditions that are acceptable to Stalin.
Well, that's why I said a ceasefire, and not a treaty, as the former is facing the realities on the ground but not wanting to admit anything while the latter being more concrete.
 
Several people have suggested that Stalin could have arranged a ceasefire with Hitler, but there was approximately zero chance for that. Hitler was not going to give up on the aim of his life - a German Lebensraum up to the Urals - when he thought he was winning. Without Lend-Lease he'll be even more convinced.

I agree that Hitler would have not agreed to a ceasefire without gaining much of the European portion of the USSR. Exactly what boundary would be sufficient for him... not sure it would be the Urals. Germany would be akin to a panther that had killed an elephant --- there is only so much it can consume.

IF, due to lack of Lend Lease, the 1942 German Summer Offensive (Case Blue) had been successful, would Hitler have been satisfied with securing a line running north from the Caspian Sea along the Volga up to and including Stalingrad, then north along the Don....ending at Finland east of and including Leningrad? (Which would have been roughly the stop line of German forces had Case Blue been a success.) Plus tribute in gold, of course.

Well short of the Urals, but it would include all of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Leningrad, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and western European Russia. This would deny Soviet access to both the Black Sea and Baltic Sea while gaining Germany the oil of Baku and the grain of the "breadbasket of Europe" (Ukraine & SW Russia).

And free up the German war machine to deal with the UK and USA, which would have entered the war a year earlier.
 
Well, the point might be that a ceasefire might be brokered when the soviets turned the tide,

I doubt Hitler would be likely to agree to a ceasefire, and stick to it, unless he was victorious and calling the shots.

If he is not humiliating his opponent he feels weak himself.
 
The problem is that it took a very long time for Hitler to realize that he wasn't winning and before that he's unlikely to agree to any conditions that are acceptable to Stalin.

Is it possible for somebody to put a bullet in the back of Stalin's head? If there are enough people who believe he is the obsticle to getting Western aid (weather that is correct or not) somebody might get desperate enough to try to pull an Alt-Valkyre (Operation Catharine?)
 
The Soviet Army's mechanization and motorization is put dramatically on the back burner and this limits its offensive potential in accomplishing the kind of mass victories like Bagration and Uranus. In addition, they have large shortages in food and other natural resources that put further pressure on the civilian population, as well as the divisions in the field.

I don't think it guarantees a German victory, by any stretch, but the Soviets as things stood had a mixed record of offensive success from 1942 onwards. Some assaults went well, some went very poorly. Without the mobility and logistical support that they had in OTL, I think its likely you see a lot more failed offensives and the successes come at higher costs with lower casualties inflicted on the Germans.

Its very possible you get a stalemate of sorts until the atomic bombs come into play.
 
I agree that Hitler would have not agreed to a ceasefire without gaining much of the European portion of the USSR. Exactly what boundary would be sufficient for him... not sure it would be the Urals. Germany would be akin to a panther that had killed an elephant --- there is only so much it can consume.

IF, due to lack of Lend Lease, the 1942 German Summer Offensive (Case Blue) had been successful, would Hitler have been satisfied with securing a line running north from the Caspian Sea along the Volga up to and including Stalingrad, then north along the Don....ending at Finland east of and including Leningrad? (Which would have been roughly the stop line of German forces had Case Blue been a success.) Plus tribute in gold, of course.

Well short of the Urals, but it would include all of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Leningrad, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and western European Russia. This would deny Soviet access to both the Black Sea and Baltic Sea while gaining Germany the oil of Baku and the grain of the "breadbasket of Europe" (Ukraine & SW Russia).

And free up the German war machine to deal with the UK and USA, which would have entered the war a year earlier.
I think that Hitler would have accepted that. The keys behind his ideology were the drive for German autarky and living space,and the elimination of impure groups. If that much land and that many natural resources were taken, I think he would agree to a ceasefire, even if he had no intention of honoring it long term (nor would Stalin, for that matter).

But the drive to put a physical extinction to Bolshevism might be the big issue with this. While its doubtful the idea of a German state up to the Urals was a red line for the Nazis, the continuing existence of Bolshevism, which they associated with international Jewry, might be an issue.
 
I think that Hitler would have accepted that. The keys behind his ideology were the drive for German autarky and living space,and the elimination of impure groups. If that much land and that many natural resources were taken, I think he would agree to a ceasefire, even if he had no intention of honoring it long term (nor would Stalin, for that matter).

But the drive to put a physical extinction to Bolshevism might be the big issue with this. While its doubtful the idea of a German state up to the Urals was a red line for the Nazis, the continuing existence of Bolshevism, which they associated with international Jewry, might be an issue.

Yeah, by January 1943 (when such a ceasefire would happen) Hitler's syphilis and use of methamphetamine and cocaine were compounding to make him quite delusional and irrational, so it is hard to say with any certainty what he would have done. But there were limits to what the Nazi state could handle, and as a map of their realm in 1942 shows...
300px-Europe_under_Nazi_domination.png
... adding the objectives of Case Blue (taking everything up to the Volga and down to the Persian frontier) would give the Reich A LOT of territory to occupy and absorb, and they still had a war to fight with the UK/US alliance.
 
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Please note the new poll at the page top.

I am assuming the events of June 1941 to June 1942 are not influenced by a lack of LL to the USSR, for the OTL flow of materials was low, did not really start until October of 41, and getting materials into the hands of those using them takes time.

For how the PoD would alter history for the USSR, I'm thinking it boils down to June 1942 through June 1943, from Stalingrad south to Baku.
 
Which ultimately meant nothing considering how rapidly the Soviets regained said territory following Op. Citadel and Kursk within a year and a half. And your link doesn't exactly lead to anything relevant AFAIK? And as for your rest; proof?

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Again, this doesn't mean a sudden and utter collapse of the Soviet Union when the Germans were both: A) On the defensive already, and B) Overstretched and undermanned. At that point the Soviet Union would've maybe lost another few dozen or hundred of kilometers of land, but ultimately means nothing when the Soviet Union counters the Germans. In the end, inevitably, the Germans cannot conquer the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union won't magically collapse when it still has a fighting chance against the Germans.

The Red Army collapsing due to starvation is an automatic victory for the Germans.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Poland and the other eastern European countries are liberated by the West except the Baltic States, but at a cost-either half a million more killed in the Holocaust or a nuked Germany, and a Russia who hates the West even more then in OTL, with some justification.
original-25942-1427414325-9.jpg

Seriously, considering the rate of the Holocaust the Nazis easily could have killed another half a million before July 1945. And there was more WW2 deaths than just the Holocaust.
 
Again, this doesn't mean a sudden and utter collapse of the Soviet Union when the Germans were both: A) On the defensive already, and B) Overstretched and undermanned. At that point the Soviet Union would've maybe lost another few dozen or hundred of kilometers of land, but ultimately means nothing when the Soviet Union counters the Germans. In the end, inevitably, the Germans cannot conquer the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union won't magically collapse when it still has a fighting chance against the Germans.

There does not need to be a complete collapse of the USSR for Germany to win an advantageous ceasefire. There is historical precedent for Soviet leadership giving up territory for peace (1917).

Germany was on the offensive in the summer and fall of 1942, with the USSR hanging on by its fingernails to prevent the capture of Stalingrad and the Caucus Mountain region.

Lack of Lend Lease would have hampered Soviet Army mobility and greatly reduced its ability to put combat aircraft in the air (trucks and aviation fuel were big parts of Lend Lease from day 1).

What would have been the result of a lack of Lend Lease on the Soviet efforts to thwart the Nazi Summer Offensive of 1942 (Case Blue)?
 
Seriously, considering the rate of the Holocaust the Nazis easily could have killed another half a million before July 1945. And there was more WW2 deaths than just the Holocaust.

To be clear, I am not a fan of prolonging the war or making the Soviets pay a heavier price for victory.

I am looking to get a better understanding of the effects of Lend Lease on the OTL. Opinions vary widely, and those best in a position to know, such as Stalin, were not exactly reliable sources of information.
 
Stalin was not best placed to understand the effects of Lend Lease. He lacked the capacities in political economy and logistics respective to the economic and military aid. Stalin’s responsibilities in Soviet and Party governance also meant that he was ill placed to comprehend and evaluate Lend Lease. He and the politburo’s and the central committee’s decision making operated at scales of abstraction where Lend Lease was abstractable and ought to have been abstracted outside of “Yes, of course more, second front when?” Stalins involvement in Stavka was primarily political, and notorious.

Stalin is the wrong place to go for primary source evidence. 5YP sectoral deficiency is a better place to go. And guess which LL was essential for a lower Central European death toll, a lower WAlly death toll especially pbi, and the political affiliation of a number of semi-periphery states? Exactly those areas of 5YP deficiency: telecom, rails, trucks and light trucks, canned food.
 
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